


Dominicus Rising

by zoicite



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dragons and knights and magic and stuff, F/F, High Fantasy AU, gtn2019exchange, roundabout spoilers for gideon the ninth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22240672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoicite/pseuds/zoicite
Summary: A dragon is terrorizing the Nine Kingdoms.  Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Queen of the Ninth Kingdom, takes to the roads after her reluctant knight, Ser Gideon Nav, to deal with the threat once and for all.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 11
Kudos: 195





	Dominicus Rising

**Author's Note:**

> For [mage-rites](http://www.mage-rites.tumblr.com)
> 
> GtN 2019 Holiday Exchange gift for mage-rites, who provided the following request prompts: “High fantasy AU of Gideon and Harrow or just something tender post-pool scene or something angsty involving Harrow.” I made an attempt to include all three, to varying degrees of success. 
> 
> AUs aren’t generally my wheelhouse, but I couldn’t resist giving this one a shot. I hope you enjoy!

The dragon appears at dusk, a dense shadowy blotch that seems to solidify as it travels fast across a sky of fading blues and oranges. It enters the Ninth Kingdom from the east and flies over the forests and villages until it reaches Castle Drearburh and then it circles slow and heavy, coming down for low swoops over the castle walls and courtyards like the bats that sleep in Drearburh’s eaves. Up close, the dragon’s great belly glows with veins of red fire. 

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Queen of the Ninth Kingdom, stares up at the great beast with her fists clenched at her sides. She stands alone on the crumbling eastern battlement, a small ink-smudged figure draped in black. She looks up at the sky, hears the distant screams of her people, and she feels _so small_. Harrow listened to the warnings of her parents for ten years, and later, once her parents were gone, she read the words that travelled to the Ninth from the other Kingdoms. She read the letters Prince Palamedes of the Sixth wrote her of smoke rising from the collapsed ruins of the First, about the silence of the Seventh, the fall of Lady Abigail Pent and Ser Magnus Quinn of the Fifth. Harrow knew it was only a matter of time. She knew this day would come.

The Ninth has no real army to defend her borders. She is an afterthought, a small and remote kingdom in perpetual mourning, thick with dark tangled forests and backed by imposing stone. The Ninth was never bursting with wealth or resources or people, not even before the last dragon appeared. Now -- 

A queen should elevate her kingdom. She must strive to preserve and improve. She must provide safety for her people to grow and flourish.

The Ninth is dying by its own hand. There’s little that Harrow can do about that now. But Harrow is damned if she is going to let another dragon hasten their demise.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus flexes her hands and prepares to make good on the circumstances of her birth, prepares to fulfill her destiny and protect her kingdom. 

Footsteps approach on the battlement. The thud of heavy boots comes slow and steady, no rushing panic in those steps. Not Ser Ortus then. There is no drag in the step, ruling out both Ser Aiglamene and Ser Crux.

Harrow curses under her breath and shakes out her hands. 

The footsteps stop beside Harrow. Harrow glances to her right to confirm what she already knows. 

“Nav,” she says.

Ser Gideon Nav, reluctant knight of the Ninth Kingdom, nods in acknowledgement. Nav is wearing some of her training armor: her chestplate and packard, her pauldrons and scale mail tassets. She’s unprepared, but she’s here; she has her sword in her gloved hands and a bright light of anticipation in her eyes. Nav’s hair matches the glowing veins of red running throughout the belly of the dragon. Maybe that means something, maybe it’s some kind of omen. Harrow doesn’t think it can be good.

“I want to fight it,” Nav says by way of greeting. As usual, Gideon seems to think the fact that they grew up together means that the formalities of station do not apply to her. Or the even more likely scenario -- Ser Gideon Nav isn’t thinking about her queen at all, not in this moment, not with a fire-bellied dragon circling overhead.

“You _want_ to fight it?”

“Yep,” Gideon confirms. She licks her lips and then glances down at Harrow. “You don’t?”

Harrow looks down at the long folds of her black gown, reaches up to touch the sharp metal of the crown on her head. She hears the screams of her people in the courtyards below, aging and ill-prepared, and she pinches her lips together and shakes her head. “Of course not, you irresponsible buffoon. I want it to _leave_.”

“Well, yeah,” Gideon agrees, unphased by the insult. She shifts her grip on her sword and shrugs. “Of course, yeah. Let it leave, then I’ll follow and I’ll fight it.”

“You’ll follow and you’ll fight it,” Harrow repeats again. 

“So it doesn’t come back?” Gideon didn’t need to phrase it as a question for Harrow to know that it isn’t the full truth. Gideon has been desperate to ditch the whole kingdom for Harrow’s entire life. Gideon wants the fame, the _glory_ , and most important: the ticket to any of the seven kingdoms still standing that aren’t this one. And yeah, Gideon Nav is the exact sort of idiot that would actually be excited at the prospect of fighting a deadly fire-breathing dragon.

Harrowhark is not that sort of idiot, and the Ninth Kingdom -- present company included -- is not ready to take on a dragon. They should be. They are a kingdom that’s been visited by a dragon before; any reasonable king and queen would have focused their efforts on making sure they were well fortified, that their defenses were in order, that they were a kingdom of strong and seasoned knights ready and willing to take on the most dangerous of threats.

King Priamhark and Queen Pelleamena did not choose to be reasonable. Instead, when the last dragon appeared almost eighteen years ago, they retreated into the depths of Drearburh and whispered words out of forbidden books they’d unearthed from the deep dark places hidden within the Ninth’s forests, books that they were not equipped to use and were not qualified to use correctly. 

That dragon burned two leek fields, damaged this eastern battlement, and killed three of the Ninth’s subjects, wounding several others. 

The Ninth’s king and queen killed two hundred children in their attempt to defend against it. 

The dragon left, the kingdom mourned, and the king and queen gave birth to Harrowhark nearly nine months later.

Harrow was three years old when she began levitating her toys, when she started her great-aunt’s skirts on fire, when they finally realized exactly what they’d done. 

The dragon bellows above them, pulling Harrow back to the present. It opens its great wide mouth and emits a stream of blue-hot flame that licks the rooftops of the homes just beyond the castle walls. The fire catches and the homes begin to burn orange and white against the dark.

“Shit,” Gideon breathes. Her voice sounds full with unmistakable awe and a not quite equal amount of fear.

Harrow rubs her thumb over her ring, polishing the round beads of stone and bone. She focuses, whispers careful words in the earthy forgotten tongue of Dominicus, and then blows air from between her lips in a long heavy sigh. 

The fires in the village die out until nothing but pale smoke remains.

“How --”

“Where is Ser Ortus?” Harrow asks, cutting off Gideon’s question.

“He ran for his armor,” Gideon says. “So he’s probably cowering somewhere waiting it out.”

“Find him,” Harrow orders. She glances behind her. It’s still only Gideon standing at her side. “Find Aiglamene and Crux and bring them all here.”

Gideon, stubborn as ever, does not move, simply says, “Ser Aiglamene is in Drearburh Village,” and stands her ground. She doesn’t bother to explain away Crux’s absence.

The dragon makes two more attempts at burning the village, each attempt over a larger swath of very flammable homes, and twice more Harrow quenches the flames. She’s breathing heavily by the time the dragon turns back toward the castle, searching for the source of the interference. 

This is it, then. This is the moment that Harrow’s been waiting for. She pictured it differently. She imagined herself older, experienced, wisened. She imagined more than Gideon Nav standing at her side. 

Harrow clenches her fist in front of her and then yanks her arm back hard and tight. The air crackles against her skin and the dragon jerks unnaturally in the sky. 

“Shit!” Gideon says again, with more gusto this time. “How are you --”

“Quiet, Nav,” Harrow warns.

Nav is quiet. She raises her sword and gets ready for whatever happens next. 

Harrow yanks the dragon again and it rears back in alarm, smoke billowing from its nostrils, its leathery wings flapping wildly. It hesitates for only a moment before it roars and dives toward the castle, flying right toward Harrow and Gideon. 

Gideon shouts and moves to stand in front of Harrow -- to get at the dragon first, of course, not out of any sense of duty to protect her Queen or country. Harrow shoves Gideon aside. 

“Nav! Move, your stupid ass. You’re in my way.”

Gideon stumbles back with enough force that Harrow wonders later if she used her talents on Gideon in addition to the dragon. Harrow pushes, hands out and open wide, fingers splayed. She screams to the winds of Dominicus and pushes with everything she has. The dragon, it’s red hot mouth open and ready, feels the thrust and cries out. Harrow pushes harder. 

The dragon rises, high up now, pushed further away from the eastern battlement, even as it struggles to continue its dive. Harrow does not let up. She pushes, hands out and open wide. She screams again with the effort and the dragon’s shrieks drown out her voice. 

Finally, the dragon shakes it head as though trying to clear water from its ears. It stops fighting and hovers in the air, high above them, staring down. It’s too far away. Harrow can’t make out the details of its face, can’t see its eyes, but she knows, can feel in her gut, that the dragon is staring right at them. Finally, _finally_ , it turns and flies back the way it came.

Harrow lets her hands fall to her sides as she sucks air into her lungs, gasping in huge breaths. The air around her feels too thin, depleted, and as she struggles to catch her breath the world spins and her knees give out. She collapses. 

Harrowhark Nonagesimus is only vaguely aware that Gideon Nav catches her just before she hits the ground, slowing her fall for a moment before releasing Harrow again. Harrow hits the stone floor of the battlement with a mildly painful thump. 

**

When Harrow comes to, she finds that she’s been placed on the sofa in her library. She’s surrounded by her great aunts, her Knight Commander Aiglamene, and Ser Gideon. There is a commotion in the corridor. 

“Your Queen is not taking visitors!” Crux shouts. “Especially not traitors to the Ninth Kingdom!”

“We are not traitors!” a shrill woman shouts back. “Ser Ortus is a respected knight of this kingdom, and as his mother --”

Harrow presses a hand to her face, the light pressure of her fingers against her eyelids blooming bright flashes where there should only be dark. “Phosphenes,” her great-aunt, the Lady Aisamorta (blinded by the king and queen’s botched magic) explained to her when she was young. Harrow groans, and Aiglamene starts at the sound and turns her focus away from the door. 

“You’re awake,” Aiglamene says. Aiglamene is aging and broken, but she’s a clever and capable commander. And she’s always had a knack for stating the obvious.

“Are you all right, child?” Harrow’s second great-aunt, the Lady Lachrimorta, leans over Harrow. She reaches out to cup Harrow’s cheek.

“I’m fine,” Harrow says. She kisses her aunt’s palm and then gently moves the woman’s hand away. Gideon is sitting in a large chair by the door. Her right leg bounces and her fingers tap against the hilt of her sword. Her yellow-eyed gaze, which somehow manages to seem bored, impatient, and anticipatory all at the same time, shifts from Harrow back to the commotion in the corridor. Harrow nods toward Gideon, the only person in the room visibly unconcerned by the state of her queen. “Nav was there. Surely she told you that I was all right?”

“Is that the Queen?” the voice from the corridor shrieks. “Is that the Queen, I hear? Your Highness! I will have a word with you!”

“The Queen is not taking visitors!” Crux bellows again. 

“Lady Glaurica?” Harrow asks Aiglamene. Aiglamene’s eyes turn up toward the ceiling as she nods. “If this is a policy complaint, it’s neither the time nor the place.”

“Mm,” Aiglamene agrees, crossing over to Harrow’s desk. “Lady Glaurica _and_ Ser Ortus. Crux found them packing their bags while we were doing our rounds, shortly after the dragon fled the Kingdom. Apparently Ser Ortus had been given a letter during his rounds several days back and failed to deliver it to you.”

“A letter?”

“It’s here somewhere,” Aiglamene says, shuffling around on the desk. 

“The pile on the right,” Gideon directs, the first thing she’s said since dropping Harrow on the battlement. No longer bored or impatient -- Gideon is bright and alert now that the subject of the letter has been broached. She moves briskly to the desk, homes in immediately on the letter, and hands it to Aiglamene.

Aiglamene accepts the folded sheet of paper. “Ah, yes. Thank you, Ser Gideon.”

“The Third Kingdom is requesting champions to bring down the dragon,” Gideon says in a rush. “Ten thousand gold chips to the Kingdom that succeeds.” Ah, so _that’s_ why Gideon is still by Harrow’s side. Crux’s anger focused on Ortus _and_ a chance to leave the Ninth Kingdom for gold and glory on good terms? Gideon leans back against Harrow’s desk and crosses her feet, no doubt in an attempt to look less excited. It isn’t working.

“Ten thousand gold chips is a drop in the ocean for the Third Kingdom,” Harrow says, carefully.

“A drop for the Third Kingdom,” Lady Aisamorta agrees, “is a deluge for the Ninth.”

Glaurica pushes her way into the room, a rush of flapping black and waving hands. She’s still arguing with Crux as she comes to stand before her queen. “And I will go, but not before I say what I came to say.” She turns toward Harrow. “A _dragon_ , your Highness. As you know, my dear husband, Ser Mortus, was murdered by a dragon in the Kingdom before you were born, and now --”

“I understand your concern, Glaurica,” Harrow assures the woman, wearily. “However, as I’m sure Ser Crux has discussed with you at length, this dragon is gone. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do not believe anyone was harmed during the raid?”

“That’s correct,” Crux says. He reaches out a big hand to grab Glaurica’s arm. Glaurica attempts to push him off, her entire body shaking with it. If they were younger, and circumstances were different, Gideon would have pulled Harrow aside later to imitate Glaurica’s display, her long body shaking in an exaggerated imitation. Harrow would have tried very hard not to laugh, would have failed, would have had to pick a fight with Gideon to make up for it.

Things were different now. They were no longer children.

Harrow holds up a hand to stop Crux and Glaurica. “You see? Crisis averted.”

“Crisis _not_ averted.” Glaurica’s words bubble out of her, high and shrill. “There is still the matter of the letter. And even without the letter, the dragon will return!”

Harrow groans and Lady Lachrimorta pushes a cup of wine into her hand. Ortus stands in the doorway looking pale and nauseous and ready to bolt.

“Ser Ortus can not be expected to fight a _dragon_ ,” Glaurica asserts. “Not in this kingdom, nor any other!”

Gideon Nav stands, her mouth open and clearly ready to volunteer herself. A dream come true! She’s cut off by Glaurica before Harrow has a chance to squash her dream.

“Ser Ortus cannot represent the Ninth. He will not be sent to his death for a world of gold chips. I cannot allow it.”

“Nor can I,” Harrow agrees. “Ser Ortus is staying safely at home, Glaurica. I would no more send him to represent the Ninth than I would send Ser Gideon Nav.”

“Harrow!”

“Mind your station, Nav,” Crux bellows. 

“In fact, the Ninth will send no one. With all of their resources, with their world of gold chips, the Third can solve this on their own. You’re all dismissed. Ser Ortus shall accompany Ser Crux to -- wherever Ser Crux decides to take you.”

Harrow waits as the group files out of the room, Ser Aiglamene aiding the aging aunts. Ser Gideon doesn’t move until Harrow pointedly clears her throat. She does stand then, but instead of moving toward the door, she approaches Harrow.

“Your Highness,” Gideon says. She drops down to one knee before Harrow. Her eyes are wide and yellow, searching Harrow’s face with an intensity that warms Harrow’s cheeks and forces her to turn away. “I offer you my sword.”

“Oh, Griddle, don’t embarrass yourself,” Harrow says. “Not now.”

The childhood nickname strikes like a slap. Gideon flinches, stands and takes a step back from Harrow. 

“Pardon me for saying, _your Highness_ , but what the fuck was all that out there?” She waves a hand in the general direction of the eastern battlement.

“What was what?” Harrow asks, though there is really no point in skirting around the subject now. She presses the letter from the Third between her fingers and waits for Gideon’s response.

“What was — I was standing right there. I saw how you pulled at that dragon. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Magic,” Harrow says, simply. She looks up at Gideon with eyebrows raised. 

Gideon scoffs as though she doesn’t believe Harrow even for one second. She points at the letter in Harrow’s hand.

“I volunteer. Answer the Third.”

“You don’t give the orders here.”

“I _volunteer_ ,” Gideon says again, practically shouts. She reaches her hands out toward Harrow, like she’s thinking about grabbing her queen and shaking her, but then thinks better of it and lets her hands fall back to her sides.

Harrow licks her lips and then holds up the letter, carefully pretending to reach through it again. Finally, she looks back at Nav. “Whoever answers this letter is a representative of the Ninth Kingdom.”

“Yes,” Gideon agrees with a sigh. “Fine, I know.”

“Not fine,” Harrow counters. “No queen in her right mind would choose her most unworthy knight to represent her kingdom.”

“Funny,” Gideon counters. “I didn’t see any of your other knights volunteering. I didn’t see them standing beside you on that battlement.”

“For the most part, they were needed elsewhere. I’ll deal with Ser Ortus. The fact remains that you were there for the dragon. You were not there for your queen.”

“Yeah, all right, you got me there. My queen, you see, is a witch and a bitch. My queen can burn for all I care, a dragon’s dinner. _My queen_ can shove her rocks and her bones and her old dirt-caked books straight up her ass.”

Harrow tsks. She slowly tears the letter into two pieces. She turns the paper and then rips it again. “You see, Nav? It would be completely irresponsible for me to send you anywhere beyond the walls of this castle let alone the walls of the kingdom.”

“Oh fuck you, Harrow,” Gideon says. She storms out of the room, slamming the heavy door behind her.

**

Harrow spends two days surrounded by her rocks and her bones and her old dirt-caked books. Twelve books were recovered from the caves in the forest. Harrow’s parents found the first two, the two that they tried to use to rid the Kingdom of a dragon, instead turning their daughter into a some sort of witch. Harrow found the other ten on her own, Gideon Nav trailing behind her. Harrow was nine years old.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus is aware that a Queen should love all of her subjects. And Harrow does love her people, but she’s also spent her entire lifetime in fear of them. Their children died to create her, thoughtlessly, senselessly, an entire generation lost. It was a decade before another child was born in the kingdom, a decade of barrenness that depleted their numbers and drained their hope, drained their loyalty.

Those who remembered, those who lived through those barren years, would surely turn on her if they ever found out, oust her and install some zealot from the Eighth Kingdom in her place. And so Harrow keeps it close, keeps it hidden. Her most trusted advisors were her parents and her great-aunts and beyond them, no one knows the full extent of her secret except for… well, except for Gideon Nav. Gideon, one of the only children to survive Harrow’s parents. Gideon who was desperate for a friend and found one of her only options in a secretive and sour princess. Gideon who followed Harrow everywhere when they were young, including into the woods, into those deep dark forbidden places to retrieve more of the knowledge that created Harrow. 

And when Harrow hit Gideon with dull fists and sharp words, eventually Gideon stopped fighting back with her own dull fists and resorted to even sharper words. Gideon snitched, ran straight to Harrow’s parents and told them about the caves and what Harrow found there, what she brought back to the castle. And Harrow’s parents -- it was too much for them, that reminder of what they’d done, of the mistakes they made. They left their kingdom, and left Harrowhark all alone.

She wasn’t likely to make many other friends after that. After that, she was the Child Queen of the Ninth Kingdom and nothing more.

Perhaps Harrow _should_ send Gideon Nav after the dragon. If Gideon defeats it, that’s ten thousand chips for the Ninth -- assuming that Gideon is good on her word and returns with the reward. Harrow can promise a letter of release, a recommendation to any other king or queen of Gideon’s choosing… not that Gideon would _need_ a letter from Harrow with a dead dragon to her name. She’ll be Ser Gideon Nav, the Dragon Slayer, and any kingdom will be happy to have her. The Third will scoop her up and claim her as their own in no time. 

And if Gideon fails to defeat the dragon, then in a way, she still gets what she wants. She gets out of the Ninth. She gets to go down in a blaze of glory, attempting something truly noteworthy, truly heroic.

Either way she’ll be lost to Harrow for good. Harrow won’t have anyone, not even the childhood friend turned rival.

So Harrow will have to do it herself. A dragon took everything from her people and gave them Harrow in return. It wasn’t an even trade. Harrow will make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The books of Dominicus are difficult to decipher, full of symbols that it’s taken Harrow years to learn, full of many more that Harrow still doesn’t understand. She knows these books -- the bits she’s been able to translate -- by heart, but she pores over them again and again anyway, tries to understand those sections that remain a mystery, convinced they hold the secrets that will tell her exactly what she needs to do. 

If Harrow can finish what her parents began, perhaps it will all mean something. Perhaps her birth will no longer feel like a tragedy. Perhaps the Ninth Kingdom can finally move on.

**

She’s nearly asleep, her cheek pressed to the musty pages of the Second Book when there’s a knock at the library door. Harrow starts and shuts the book quickly, sets another book over it to conceal the cover. The back room to the library, the room that contains Harrow’s collection, is open but just slightly, not enough for anyone to see inside. 

“Yes?” Harrow asks. She smooths her hair, wipes a hand across her face, tries to scrub the sleep from her eyes. She picks up her discarded crown and sets it over her sleep mused curls. 

“Your Highness,” Ser Aiglamene says, stepping into the room. Always the professional, Aiglamene stands straight, her back to the wall beside the door. 

“What is it?” Harrow asks. 

“Nav.” Aiglamene says. Her cheek twitches with the word, and it’s enough to tell Harrow exactly what has happened.

Harrow squeezes her eyes shut, nods. “She couldn’t resist.”

“No,” Aiglamene agrees. “I’ll go after her.”

Harrow stands and shakes her head. “Let her go.”

“Let her go?”

“Who knows,” Harrow says with a shrug. “Maybe she’ll succeed. Maybe she’ll even bring glory to the Ninth. Miracles do happen, so they say.”

Aiglamene grunts, unconvinced. Harrow carefully stacks the papers on her desk and slides them into a drawer. Aiglamene is watching her too closely. 

“I don’t know what time she left,” Aiglamene warns. “She may have an eight hour head start.”

Harrow shrugs again. An eight hour head start. A twenty-four hour head start. This information means absolutely nothing to Harrow; it’s only a head start if anyone intends to follow.

Aiglamene watches as Harrow continues to tidy her desk. Eventually she clears her throat and says, “All right. I’ll leave you to it then?”

“Yes,” Harrow agrees. “You may go, Ser Aiglamene. Thank you for letting me know.”

Aiglamene nods and starts to let herself out. She turns back at the last moment and says, “We’ll make the pronouncement and Ser Crux and I will take care of things here.”

Harrow stops and frowns at Aiglamene. Gideon surely isn’t dead yet, what pronouncement -- Harrow narrows her eyes. Aiglamene knows her too well. 

“You’re right, you know,” Aiglamene says. “Nav may not be who you would choose to represent the kingdom, but she is a skilled and determined knight. She may well be a real threat to this dragon. When you find her, don’t be too harsh with her.”

Harrow waits a full hour, refusing to be as predictable as her Knight Commander imagines her to be. She waits a full hour as she imagines Gideon facing off with Harrow’s dragon alone and unsupported, imagines Gideon left broken on a battlefield, imagines Gideon unknown and discarded in some other kingdom. Harrow tosses her crown onto the sofa, changes into her riding trousers and her cloak, and stalks to the stables to retrieve her horse. She pulls her hood low over her head. She keeps her eyes down, and though she’s sure she’s recognized, sure she’s unmistakable to ever person she passes, not one dares confront her. 

Her mare, Phalange, is saddled up and waiting. Thank you, Aiglamene.

Ser Gideon’s horse is fast, but she’s no match for Phalange.

Harrow just has to catch up.

**

She catches up to Gideon on the Ninth-to-Eighth Road. Harrow expects to find Gideon alone, racing toward the gate as fast as Knocknee can carry her. Instead, she finds Gideon riding at a comfortable pace beside a woman on a pale grey horse that Harrow is certain she’s never seen before. Even from a distance, Harrow can tell the woman is not from the Ninth. This isn’t a woman past her prime, some old crone from Drearburh village. The figure on the horse is too young to be from the Ninth at all. A secret lover? Nav may spend her nights fantasizing about chivalry and beautiful women, but the Ninth Kingdom is no place to find such things. The Ninth is full of old women and young children and little in between except for Harrow, Gideon, and Ser Ortus. Has Gideon been making connections with outsiders over the wall and through the Ninth’s gates?

It doesn’t make sense. Gideon is never tasked with patrolling the border wall. Gideon was specifically never provided keys to any of the gates. Where would she meet this woman? 

Harrow is far enough back on the road that she hasn’t been noticed. She slows Phalange and watches the pair.

Gideon and the woman appear to be conversing amiably. Gideon sits high on her horse, her back straight and her helmet propped beneath one arm. The sun catches on her hair and the metal of her hauberk and she seems to glow, an illumination lighting up the dark Ninth forests that stretch out in either direction. Occasionally the woman beside Gideon laughs and reaches out her hand to touch Gideon’s arm.

Harrow can feel Gideon’s blush from here. 

Enough. 

She presses her ring to her mouth, feels the cold press of the stone and bone against her lip, and then she concentrates on Gideon’s cloak, closes her fist and draws her hand back to her side, fast and firm. Gideon jerks on her horse. She wobbles, scrambling for purchase. Knocknee cries out and starts to rear back, but Gideon manages to calm the horse before she's thrown, hand spread wide against Knocknee's neck.

The woman beside Gideon races off into the trees, clearly spooked by the possibility of an attack. 

Harrow urges Phalange onward, the sound of her hooves alerting the two women to her presence on the road. Gideon’s favorite sword, her two-hander, is carefully sheathed at Knocknee’s side, too large to be battle-ready at a moment’s notice. Gideon, however, is not entirely unprepared. She unsheaths a smaller longsword, turns Knocknee back toward her attacker, and then freezes when recognizes Harrow or Phalange or, more than likely, both.

“Harrow!” Gideon growls, before she catches herself and remembers her company and her station. 

“Ser Gideon,” Harrow says, her voice formal and her head held high. “Fix your form. You look like you learned how to ride a horse just yesterday. What would the queen think if she saw you slouched like that?”

Gideon stares hard at Harrow, but she sits up straight on her saddle, then bows her head and, ignoring Harrow’s cues and the slight shake of Harrow’s head, says, “Your Highness.”

So much for staying anonymous.

“Your Highness? I -- Oh! The Child Queen of the Ninth Kingdom!” Gideon’s mysterious companion exclaims, leading her horse as she rushes back onto the road. Harrow bristles at the name. “Oh, but I never thought I’d actually get to --” She releases her horse’s reins and drops to her knees.

Harrow rolls her eyes and nods her head from Gideon toward the woman. Gideon manages to understand _that_ cue and reaches down to help the woman to her feet. 

“I’m no longer a child,” Harrow says. The woman looks up at Harrow with wide blue eyes, swimmingly apologetic, and then she bows her head and curtsies. 

“Your Highness,” the woman corrects. “Of course not, please forgive me. The Seventh Kingdom only ever hears of the Ninth through secondhand stories and songs.”

Gideon bites her lip, clearly imagining the sorts of songs one might sing about Harrowhark Nonagesimus. 

“Your Highness, my name is Lady Dulcinea Septimus. I was sent by --”

“The Seventh Kingdom,” Harrow cuts in, looking down her nose at Dulcinea. Harrow revels in those moments, few and far between, when she actually gets to feel tall. “Yes, we got that part. You’re stealing my knight.”

“Oh, no,” Lady Dulcinea protests with a vigorous shake of her head. Her hood falls to her shoulders, revealing a cloud of soft brown curls. “I came to see you. Meeting Ser Gideon was nothing more than a lucky coincidence.”

“You’re headed away from my kingdom, not toward it.”

“Yes, but -- “ Lady Dulcinea looks up at Gideon Nav with gleaming blue eyes and an obvious plea for help. 

“I told the Lady that I was tasked by my queen to answer the Third Kingdom’s summons, your Highness,” Gideon announces. She pulls a letter from her pocket and waves it vaguely in Harrow’s direction. A forgery, and not a very good one, judging by the length of the glance Harrow is allowed.

“Ah,” Harrow says, simply. 

“It must be difficult parting with such a bold and… impressive knight,” Dulcinea says, eyes still trained toward Gideon. She looks… hungry.

Oh, this is disgusting and ridiculous. Harrow sneers.

“Ser Gideon is certainly bold,” Harrow agrees. “So bold, in fact, that I’ve decided it would be best that I accompany my champion on her quest. I crave adventure.”

“Oh!” Dulcinea says. “How unusual! Almost reckless! A young Queen without an heir choosing to accompany her champion into danger and risking her entire kingdom. How unconventional! But then the stories of the Ninth did always make it seem an unconventional place. It’s all very romantic, isn’t it?”

Gideon bites her lip and glares daggers at Harrow.

Harrow smiles and nods toward the woman on the road. “Yes, the Ninth is very unusual,” she agrees. “Lead the way, Ser Gideon. I’ll ride behind with Lady Dulcinea.”

Gideon is fuming, but she’s clearly trying to make a good impression on this woman. She can't fight Harrow here in front of Dulcinea Septimus of the Seventh Kingdom. Harrow's left her no real choice. She falls back to follow Harrow’s lead. 

**

Dulcinea Septimus desperately wants the Queen of the Ninth to believe that she’s an overly romantic and fanciful maiden, a fool brought to the Ninth at the behest of her King, her knights murdered on the roads of the Fourth by brigands and thieves. She looks like she’s older than Harrow by at least a decade. She looks like she knows a lot more than she’s letting on.

“I only escaped thanks to the speed and agility of my dear horse, Protesilaus,” Dulcinea simpers and reaches down to pat the neck of the grey steed. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he? A horse of legends, much like your beautiful mare. She’s so black. She’s _gleaming_.”

“Yes,” Harrow agrees. “My horse is very shiny and your horse is handsome enough.” Dulcinea Septimus is full of shit. Harrow doesn’t know what her real story is, but it clearly isn’t the line of drivel she’s feeding them now. Gideon Nav may be a simpleton, desperate and easy to seduce, but Harrowhark Nonagesimus will not be entranced by high cheekbones, by windswept curls and by teeth that are too prominent, too large for the small set of Dulcinea’s lips. Harrow will not be swayed by girlish giggling. 

When they pause to rest, Gideon rushes to help Dulcinea down from her horse, visibly shaking at the touch of Dulcinea’s fingers on her hand. Harrow feels anger flare in her gut at the pathetic display. 

She pulls Gideon aside as soon as Dulcinea wanders off into the forest to relieve herself.

“You’re making a fool of yourself falling all over that woman,” Harrow hisses. She pulls Gideon further down the road and away from Dulcinea’s horse.

“I’m not falling all over her,” Gideon counters, pulling her arm away. “I’m being chivalrous. “I’m a knight. That’s kinda the job description.”

“Your job is to defend and fight for your queen,” Harrow corrects. “There is nothing in your job description about slobbering all over blatant trespassers.”

“So you’re jealous,” Gideon concludes. Oh wonderful, and now she’s smiling. No, not smiling. Gideon is absolutely grinning.

Harrow rolls her eyes and busies herself by pulling at her fingers, cracking her knuckles. She didn’t see Gideon rushing to help her _queen_ down from her horse. So yeah, maybe she is a little jealous of preferential treatment that should by all rights move in the opposite direction. She studies the ring on her finger and contemplates hitting Gideon in the back of the head with a rock. Gideon isn’t wearing her helmet. It will hurt.

“Anyway, you’re the one that looks like a fool,” Gideon continues, when it becomes clear that Harrow isn’t going to give Gideon the satisfaction of a verbal response. “What the hell are you thinking? Lady Dulcinea is right. You _are_ reckless! Not very smart, the Queen of the Ninth out on the roads alone.”

“The Queen of the Ninth can defend herself,” Harrow seethes. She concentrates and pulls up a large stone from the path behind Gideon, carefully levitating it without letting the strain of the magic show on her face.

“Yeah,” Gideon agrees. “Maybe she could, if she wanted all Nine Kingdoms to know all of her secrets. Where’s Ser Crux?” As though _Ser_ Gideon Nav cares if Harrowhark Nonagesimus is slaughtered on her own roads, as though she cares if Harrow is exposed as a sorceress, unnaturally forged by the deaths of two hundred of the Ninth’s children.

“Ser Crux is exactly where I need him to be.”

“What game are you playing?” Gideon continues, her voice low. She notices the tension in Harrow’s face and turns to look behind her. Harrow releases the rock and it falls to the ground with a thud. Gideon huffs a little, but doesn’t draw her sword. “Look, I’m honored that you came yourself to drag me back; I assumed you’d send Crux or at least bring Ser Ortus for protection. Until I recognized Phalange, I thought you were one of those black shades the old village women claim haunt the forest.”

“I haven’t come for you at all,” the Ninth’s actual black shade responds. “I’ve come to slay the dragon. And as much as I’d love to send you straight back to Drearburh, I need you here. You will accompany me as both the cover for ‘all of my secrets’ and as my bodyguard.”

Gideon snorts, and then her eyes widen as she realizes that Harrow is serious.

“Really?” Gideon asks. She folds her arms over her chest and leans down over Harrow in an attempt to make Harrow feel small and insignificant. “ _You’re_ going to kill the dragon now? How?”

“Magic. Honestly, Nav. Did you hit your head? You knew this about me already!” Harrow snaps, pointing her finger at Gideon’s chest. “You’ve known since we were children.”

“I knew that you’ve been poking around in dirty old books for years,” Gideon counters. “I knew you could make cups and stones levitate. I knew you could hurl rocks and bricks and even chairs at me without using your hands. I didn’t know you could yank a _dragon_ from the sky.”

“You’ve been calling me a witch since we were babies.” They’d made a game of it even. They’d go out, deep into the forest where they were sure they wouldn’t be found or bothered. They’d find a clearing, and then Harrow would throw whatever she could manage to pull up at Gideon and Gideon would fight Harrow off, sending projectiles flying, deflecting rocks and cutting through sticks and logs. It all ended when they found the caves, when Harrow couldn’t resist and ventured inside.

“You _are_ a witch!” Gideon snaps now. “And a fucking bitch.”

“Oh, stop. If you really believe that then why are you always so surprised when I act as either?”

“You were just about to hit me in the back of the head with a rock! Harrow, I’ve never been surprised by a single rotten thing you’ve ever done,” Gideon says. “I’m not even surprised by this. Now _you_ want to answer the Third? I’m your bodyguard and you’ll kill the dragon for gold and glory. You really will do anything if it means making my life miserable, won’t you?”

“Oh, Griddle. I don’t care how you feel about this one way or another. And I don’t care about gold or glory. The Third can shove their gold up their collective ass,” Harrow sniffs. “I’m doing it for revenge, Nav. I will kill the dragon to avenge the Ninth. I will kill the dragon as punishment for leaving me saddled with a scrap of a Kingdom, with absolutely no one except the likes of _you_.” She will kill the dragon for corrupting her parents, for setting them on a course that ended in death and heartbreak. 

The only reason Gideon Nav was knighted at all was because the Ninth Kingdom was desperately lacking in able bodies. The only reason Gideon Nav was knighted was because she spent their childhood years fantasizing of the knights of the realm, tried to escape the Ninth so many times in the hopes of becoming some other knight’s squire and working her way up from there. The _only_ reason Gideon Nav was knighted was because Harrow assumed that Gideon _knew_ why she was a sorceress, knew exactly what Harrow was capable of. She thought that Gideon at least _suspected_ what Harrow’s parents had done. 

Turns out, Harrow could have let Gideon go ages ago and been done with it. Saved them years of trouble.

“It probably isn’t even the same dragon,” Gideon points out.

Harrow shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. It’s a dragon. That’s good enough for me.”

“Two days ago you didn’t want anything to do with it, you just wanted it gone. So what changed?”

Harrow doesn’t want to answer this question. Regardless of everything else, Harrow was born in the destructive wake of a dragon. Didn’t it make sense that she would be the one to bring the dragon down? Didn’t it make sense to hope that this will be the final act that will bring her peace, allow her to fully embrace her kingdom. The thing is -- the part that leaves her loath to answer -- there’s a not insignificant part of her that just can’t stand the thought of Gideon out here alone. She can’t stand the thought that Gideon might never come back. And more than anything, she can’t _stand_ the fact that she can't stand those things. 

Harrow does not want to say any of this to Gideon, so she turns the conversation toward the other matter. She looks back toward Dulcinea, returned from her piss break and feeding bunches of grass into her horse’s maw as she whispers secrets into his handsome grey ear.

“Where did you find Lady Dulcinea Septimus hiding, Nav?”

Nav sighs and runs a hand through her hair, leaving it standing straight out in several directions. “She was on the road headed toward Drearburh.”

“I assume you recall that the Ninth Kingdom is closed to all travelers, no exceptions.”

“Everyone knows that, Harrow. Everyone also knows that the Ninth Kingdom doesn’t have enough knights to back up that pronouncement.”

“All gates are locked and barred.”

“I assume _you_ recall that Ser Ortus, recently responsible for the wall patrols, is complete shit at his job. How much do you want to wager that we’re going to get to the Eight-to-Ninth Road gate and find it standing _wide_ open because the last time Ortus was out here, he got that letter from the Third, promptly shit his knightly trousers, and ran home to tell his mother?”

That… actually sounds entirely probable.

“I don’t trust this,” Harrow says. 

“So don’t,” Gideon says. She throws up her hands in frustration. “Sleep with your magic fingers tense and ready. I’ll sleep with my sword in my hand. She’s out here alone, Harrow. She isn’t a soldier or a knight. She doesn’t seem witchy. She’s a scared woman doing the best she can to rid the Nine Kingdoms of a common threat. Same as us.”

Harrow shakes her head. “She’s not the same as us.”

“I mean, yeah, okay,” Gideon agrees. “But that’s probably a good thing. Maybe she knows stuff about this whole thing that we don’t. She’s been out on the roads and you and I have never left the Ninth. She probably knows some things about the dragon too. She seems -- she’s smart. She’s here to help.”

Harrow groans. Gideon has known this woman for mere hours and she’s so bewitched by rich brown curls and big blue eyes that Harrow feels queasy just listening to her. She wouldn’t be surprised if Dulcinea Septimus _is_ a witch. Who is to say the Seventh Kingdom doesn’t have their own hidden set of books just waiting to be unearthed? 

“Is everything all right?” Dulcinea calls from the road. 

Gideon smiles and waves. She starts back toward Dulcinea, but Harrow grabs her arm to hold her back for just a moment longer.

“Fine,” Harrow says. “We get as much information from her as we can, then we drop her on a road back to the Seventh Kingdom and we go our separate ways.”

**

They settle for the night in a clearing off the road somewhere within the common lands that border the Eighth Kingdom. So far the landscape outside the Ninth looks much like the Ninth itself, a quiet road through dark and seemingly empty forests. Which is perhaps lucky seeing as Gideon was right about the Ninth-to-Eighth Road gate. It was standing wide open.

“Told you,” Gideon mumbled low so that she wasn’t broadcasting their conversation to Septimus. Harrow fumed beside her. She watched carefully as Gideon pulled a set of keys from her satchel and locked the heavy doors behind them. Crux better run Ser Ortus through the ringer while Harrow’s gone.

They gather leaves and sticks to build a fire and Gideon passes Harrow a hunk of stale bread stolen from the Ninth’s kitchen. Dulcinea is better prepared, offering cheese and salted meats. Lady Dulcinea goes on and on about her favorite cuisine from the Seventh Kingdom, claiming that talking about better meals will make the food they have taste that much better. They finish eating and Harrow can still hear Gideon’s stomach growling beside her.

Harrow shoots Gideon a look and then turns to Dulcinea with a smile. She keeps her voice as sweet and sincere as she can manage.

“Lady Dulcinea, what do you know of this dragon?”

“Oh, not much,” Dulcinea says with a wave of her hand. “I’ve seen it, but only from a great distance. I suppose that’s very lucky, isn’t it!” She laughs.

“But you must have heard something,” Harrow presses. “People must talk.”

“Yes,” Dulcinea agrees. She presses her fingers to her lips, concentrating, and then her eyes pop open. “I do know something. No one has been able to find where the dragon sleeps! It’s as though it just disappears completely. _That’s_ why it’s been so difficult to dispatch, you see? The easiest way to take down a dragon is to find its lair and cut it down while it snores away oblivious, but if you can’t find its lair, then you have to take on the dragon when it is awake and ready for the fight. No kingdom in this realm has a witch or wizard powerful enough to contend with that. No knight can dodge a dragon’s fire --” Gideon snorts “-- no archer has arrows strong enough to pierce the dragon’s scales.”

“So the other kingdoms believe it’s impossible,” Harrow concludes.

Dulcinea shrugs. “Yes and no. There must be a way. How would the Ninth handle such a threat?”

“The Seventh must be aware that the Ninth is a very small kingdom. We were hit badly when another dragon stuck many years ago and we’ve never fully recovered.”

“Surely Ser Gideon, Champion of the Ninth, has a plan,” Lady Dulcinea presses. She leans in toward Gideon as she says it and the front of her gown gapes just slightly, exposing collarbone and a glimpse of pale chest. Harrow and Gideon both look away. Gideon clears her throat.

“Sure,” Ser Gideon says. Her voice catches in her throat. She chews at the inside of her cheek and then throws more wood onto the flames. 

“The Champion of the Ninth’s excellence lies in spontaneity,” Harrow supplies. “She will judge the situation when it arises, and she will act accordingly.” Translation: Gideon will throw her sword around and desperately hope to hit _something_. The only planning Gideon Nav has ever done is planning to ruin Harrow’s life and ditch the Ninth Kingdom for good.

“The dragon must sleep somewhere,” Gideon says.

“The rumor is that the dragon has made a home in the First Kingdom’s crumbling Canaan Castle,” Dulcinea agrees. “But it’s been thoroughly searched by the Third and the Sixth and neither has found any sign of a dragon’s lair within.”

“Why do _you_ think that the Ninth can do what the Third and the Sixth could not?” Harrow asks. “You came a long way to collect us, after all.”

“I thought that, perhaps, a fresh perspective would yield different results,” Dulcinea shrugs. “Truthfully, I thought nothing; I was sent by my king. The Seventh Kingdom is a neighbor of the First, and as such, the dragon appears in our kingdom often, wreaking havoc. Many lives have been lost. The Seventh is desperate to end this situation once and for all.”

Harrow picks up a long stick and begins poking at the fire. She looks up and catches Dulcinea’s eye. 

“The Sixth Kingdom has spoken long and often about the silence of the Seventh. The Sixth was under the impression that the Seventh was either not interested in the fight, or had already lost.”

“I don’t know why that would be,” Dulcinea says. She holds Harrow’s gaze. “I have heard many stories of how tiresome the Sixth can be, perhaps my king tired of the endless correspondence and simply stopped answering.”

Harrow is loathe to admit it, but this seems plausible. Harrow’s letters to Prince Palamedes over the years were always far shorter and less numerous than his letters to her. She bristled at the very thought of reporting any news from her kingdom, did not want anyone to guess at the Ninth’s secrets. But then, the Ninth does have many secrets. If they did not, would Harrow’s correspondence have been more open? Would she have welcomed the Sixth’s letters and responded with warm verbosity instead of her usual cold brevity?

It sounds to Harrow like the Seventh Kingdom may have its own secrets to keep.

**

When it comes time to sleep, Harrow realizes the full consequences of her hasty exit from Drearburh, her rush to catch up with the Ninth’s _champion_. She’s brought absolutely nothing except the clothes on her back, her horse, and her satchel, which contains exactly one thing: the Second Book of Dominicus. The book may help her defeat a dragon, but not if she’s going to starve or freeze along the road in some foreign kingdom before she can catch up to it.

She stands at a loss in front of the fire for a long moment while Dulcinea and Gideon arrange their bed rolls. Gideon, thankfully, has chosen to set her bed roll at a considerable distance from Dulcinea’s. If she’d chosen a closer location, Harrow might have been forced to expel her dinner.

She takes in her attire and considers whether she’ll freeze during the night if she removes her cloak for use as a makeshift bed roll. She's just come to the conclusion that she might as well just sleep wrapped in the cloak on the ground -- what difference does laying it out make? -- when Gideon nudges her arm.

“What is it?” Harrow snaps, frustrated, irritable and tired.

Gideon rolls her eyes at Harrow’s tone and then nods toward her bed roll.

Harrow stills, her mind immediately conjuring horrifying images of Gideon’s larger body spooned around her own, of Gideon’s face nuzzled up against her neck, of Gideon’s hot breath against her cheek. 

“I’m going to stay up and keep watch for a while,” Gideon clarifies. “Get some rest.”

“We’ll take turns,” Harrow suggests. “I don’t need much sleep.” She watches as Gideon leans down to grab a few of the sticks they’ve piled together. Gideon throws them on the fire and then wipes her hands on her hips.

“Sure,” Gideon agrees. “Good idea.” 

Gideon doesn’t say a thing about the fact that Harrow is entirely unprepared and out of her element. Harrow doesn’t snarl and accuse Gideon of being so prepared only because she’s spent over a decade planning for this very moment, counting the days until she could escape Harrow forever.

Maybe, for once, they can save the insults for the morning.

Gideon lowers herself down to sit back by the fire, her sword laid out beside her. 

Harrow glances over toward Dulcinea. The woman is curled up in her bed roll with her eyes shut. She can’t possibly be asleep already, but at least she has the good sense to stay out of the way and pretend she hasn’t been listening.

Harrow lies down on Gideon’s bed roll, curls up on her side so that she can see Gideon by the fire. She watches her knight for a while, watches the way the fire flickers light over Gideon’s face. Gideon picks bark from a stick, her tongue sticking out in concentration. When she feels Harrow’s eyes on her, she looks up. Harrow shuts her eyes quickly and lets the crackling of the fire lull her to sleep.

**

Gideon spends the morning riding beside Dulcinea. From what Harrow can hear, they’re discussing the heroics of some long dead Seventh Kingdom knight. Harrow urges Phalange to pull ahead of the group when Dulcinea starts asking Gideon about her own heroic feats. She doesn’t need to hear what kind of ridiculous fabricated response Gideon comes up with to impress Lady Dulcinea. Gideon hasn’t completed a single heroic feat in her entire life.

Harrow distracts herself by running spells through her head, puzzling over words and symbols that she memorized years ago but has yet to decipher. Those of the realm call the sun Dominicus; named after a great sorcerer who conquered the dragons of old and gave birth to the Nine Kingdoms as they now stand. This was why, when Harrow’s parents found the books beneath the Ninth and recognized the name of Dominicus, they rushed straight to them the instant a dragon appeared in their kingdom, sure that the books were the key to the dragon’s defeat. 

There is nothing in these books; however, that have anything to do with the sun. Harrow’s magic is tied to the earth, to the dirt and stone beneath her feet, to the rock and bone she’s affixed to her fingers. 

There is also nothing in the books -- at least nothing Harrow has managed to decipher -- that speaks specifically about the defeat of dragons. There is nothing about dragons at all.

Is Harrow making the same mistake her parents made? Is she following too closely in their footsteps?

Gideon pulls ahead of Dulcinea, comes to ride at Harrow’s side.

“We should come up with a plan,” Gideon says, and then clarifies, lest Harrow assume she’s talking of Dulcinea. “A plan for dealing with the dragon, I mean.”

“I don’t need your help with this, Nav. You are to protect me. I deal with the dragon.”

“Harrow --”

“Your job is to protect your queen,” Harrow repeats, her voice cold. “Nothing more.”

Gideon mutters something under her breath that Harrow doesn’t quite catch. She can imagine likely enough words. Heinous Witch. Horrid Bitch. Nothing she hasn’t heard from Gideon a thousand times before. 

Harrow ignores it. 

“I need this,” Harrow admits. She keeps her eyes on the road ahead, doesn’t dare look at Gideon now.

“I get that,” Gideon says. “I get it, Harrow. I just don’t get why you have to do it alone.”

**

It would be one thing if Harrow knew of anyone that she could ask. If Harrow knew of even a single person with knowledge of the books. Harrow knows no other witch, no sorcerer, no one that she can ask a single question. Her great-aunts have stories of old magic in the Ninth, but nothing current, nothing from the other kingdoms, nothing that is of use to Harrow. 

She’s never dared discuss the books with anyone else in the Ninth. She huddled in her library, poring over the pages, staring until her vision blurred and her head ached. She contemplated sending inquiries regarding Dominicus to Prince Palamedes of the Sixth -- he’s always eager to converse and seems to be well versed in books of the realm -- but she didn’t dare give herself away to a royal from another kingdom, not even one as friendly and inviting as Palamedes. Truthfully, she doesn’t know a thing about Palamedes Sextus. She is merely starved for companionship, starved for knowledge, absolutely _starved_ for understanding and camaraderie.

“You know, I expected it to be different out here.”

Harrow starts, looks up from the flames. They’ve been quiet for so long, long enough for Harrow to get caught up in her own head, forget they were here at all. Now Harrow looks around at the forest that stretches back endlessly from their camp, that lines edges the road without clearing. 

“How?” Harrow asks, though she understands. She thought it would be different too. 

“I thought there would be more,” Gideon admits. “More people, more to see. It feels like we haven’t left the Ninth at all.” She’s polishing her sword with an old cloth. She turns it toward the fire to inspect its shine.

“There will be more to see closer to the First,” Dulcinea assures Gideon. “You’ll have to cross through the Fourth and the Fifth, wealthier kingdoms, larger than the Eighth and Ninth combined.”

Harrow bristles at this, though of course it’s no secret that the Ninth lacks resources.

“We’ll need to find somewhere sooner than that,” Gideon points out. “If we want to keep eating, I mean.” She picks up her pack and shakes it to demonstrate the state of her supplies.

“Lady Dulcinea,” Harrow says. “You’re a seasoned traveler and you’ve journeyed this way before. Can you tell us when we can expect to find a village? How long before we can restock?”

Dulcinea considers her response. “There _is_ a village on the edge of the Eighth. White Eye. We should pass by it tomorrow afternoon.”

“White Eye,” Gideon repeats and then shivers. Harrow shares the sentiment. 

“That’s good,” Harrow says, pushing back her unease with her neighbors. The Eighth -- they’re fine, they’re just intensely devout. “And how long would you say before we reach our destination? I’m eager to arrive at Canaan Castle to deal with the matter at hand.”

“Oh, another twenty days at least,” Dulcinea says, immediately. “The Eighth-to-Fourth Road is long, and the roads you must travel through the Fourth Kingdom are far longer.”

“Twenty days,” Harrow repeats. “That’s -- surely there must be a shorter route?” The Ninth Kingdom borders the Eighth Kingdom, borders the Fourth Kingdom and the Second Kingdom. The Second Kingdom directly borders the First. “What about through the Second?”

Dulcinea shakes her head and then pauses. “Well, yes, there is,” she says, carefully. “There’s a pass over the Second Range, but that’s -- it’s a hard road, with many places for thieves to hide.”

Gideon and Harrow glance at each other. Gideon raises her eyebrows and shrugs. Gideon can take thieves. If Harrow expects to be able to take down a dragon, thieves should be no problem for her either.

“I think we can handle thieves,” Harrow says. 

Gideon’s ready and her grin stretches sharp and wide. 

**

In the morning, Dulcinea Septimus is gone.

Gideon searches the forest in a panic, desperate to find any sign of the woman or her grey horse, Protesilaus. Harrow helps, walking the forest in a slightly more half-hearted manner. There is no sign of Dulcinea or her horse, and unless she is trying very hard to hide, Dulcinea should be easy to find in the dark forest. Her wardrobe, from what Harrow’s seen of it anyway, is entirely composed of pale greens and blues, not particularly conducive to camouflage. If she was still there, they would have found her easily.

Harrow gives Gideon a little over an hour of searching before she intervenes. They’re far enough into the forest now that Harrow can barely see the road. The last thing she wants is to get lost out here with Gideon Nav. 

“Enough, Nav. She’s gone.”

“You don’t know that,” Gideon snaps, scared and irritable. “Why would she just leave without saying anything?”

“Why not?” Harrow asks. “That’s a thing that people do. It’s a thing you did.” And then Harrow followed suit; up and left her entire kingdom behind without a single word. If Aiglamene hadn't known her so well, hadn’t been able to read her intentions, perhaps Harrow would have left a note, but for the queen of an entire kingdom, a note was essentially the same as leaving nothing at all.

“Harrow,” Gideon sighs. She kicks at a tree. “Not now.”

“I’m not trying to start anything with you,” Harrow clarifies. “But think about it. She told us her knights were killed by thieves on her journey to the Ninth. If that was true, then last night’s talk must have spooked her. She took off.” 

Gideon seems to consider this. 

“She’s probably in White Eye by now,” Harrow says. “She’ll take the longer road home, and you and I will take the pass over the Second Range.”

Gideon sits down on the trunk of a fallen tree and presses her face into her hands. She looks, for a second, like she might be crying and Harrow is momentarily horrified until Gideon looks up again, her eyes dry. 

“Okay,” Gideon says with another heavy sigh. “Okay, you’re right. We probably spooked her and she ran off.”

“You did get awfully excited at the prospect of thieves,” Harrow points out. 

Gideon groans. “Oh God, you’re _right_. She thinks I’m a bloodthirsty wretch!”

Harrow actually laughs. She reaches out a hand to help Gideon back to her feet. Before she has a chance to truly think about what she’s doing, about the inappropriateness of the gesture, Gideon accepts her hand, and Harrow’s pulling her knight up. Or at the very least, she’s pulling a little while Gideon does most of the work. Gideon is very big. Gideon’s hand is warm in Harrow’s, slightly damp from the forest. Her grip feels firm, confident even, which surprises Harrow, though it probably shouldn’t. 

As soon as Gideon’s on her feet, Harrow yanks her hand back. Gideon starts, clearly surprised by the force with which Harrow retracts the gesture. 

“Let’s get back to the road,” Harrow suggests. 

Harrow doesn’t quite know what to do with her hand now that it’s her own again. She curls it into a fist and shoves it into the pocket of her cloak, but that somehow feels like she’s trying to contain the memory of Gideon’s hand in hers, trying to hold on to the feeling. She pulls her hand back from her pocket and wipes it on her hip.

Gideon, thankfully, is walking ahead of Harrow, and is therefore not looking at Harrow as though she’s lost her damn mind. She has her hand on the hilt of her longsword, and appears entirely unphased by the moment. 

Still lost in thoughts of Dulcinea, no doubt. Harrow sours at that. 

Harrow was sure the story about the thieves was a fabrication. There must be something else that pushed Dulcinea Septimus out of their lives. Either way, it’s a relief. No more watching Gideon Nav fall pathetically all over Lady Dulcinea. No more wondering how she is going to distract Dulcinea, how Harrow is going to hold on to her secrets when the time comes for Harrow to bring the dragon down. 

Dulcinea, admittedly, provided them with some potentially useful information. She’s fulfilled her purpose, and now that she’s gone, Harrow needs Gideon focused on the task at hand. They have a dragon to kill, a kingdom to save, and a reward to collect.

Gideon trips over a patch of raised roots and nearly falls on her face.

“Pay attention, Nav,” Harrow snaps. “You’re no good to anyone with broken bones.”

It’s time to get back to the status quo.

**

White Eye is hardly a village, even by the Ninth’s standards. 

“Come on,” Gideon sighs, taking in the sad little line of buildings and the wet mud of the road. “This is disappointing.”

Harrow says nothing because the only thing she wants to say, the only words bubbling in her gut, are in defense of the Ninth, are punches at Gideon for being so desperate to leave for so many years, for being so sure there was so much _more_ beyond the Ninth’s walls. Here is your more, Gideon. A sad little roadside village full of people just as old as the crones and misers of the Ninth! Here is your village and it isn’t full of buxom fairytale women eager to fall all over the mysterious ginger knight! It’s full of normal weary people who eye Harrow and Gideon with suspicion and sell them goods only begrudgingly, without warmth or invitation to stick around.

Harrow holds her tongue, but her gut warms a little when Gideon suggests they return to the road as soon as Harrow’s satchel and Gideon’s saddle bags are full. Her heart warms when Gideon reaches out to help Harrow onto Phalange. 

Harrow knocks Gideon’s hands away. They’ve already made that mistake once today. Harrow can get on her horse without help.

**

The burning sun of Dominicus is high and bright by the time they reach the turn for the road that will take them over the Second Pass. The mountains stand tall and steep before them. They’re reminiscent of the Ninth’s Drearburh Range and the sight of their cold stone peaks is a strange comfort for Harrow. 

There’s a sign post at the crossroad. The sign warns travelers that the road ahead includes steep cliffs, blind turns and rock falls. Someone’s drawn a little skull and crossbones over the wood with red paint.

“That’s ominous,” Gideon comments. 

Harrow sniffs. “You’re welcome to take the long road. Maybe you’ll catch up with your girlfriend.”

“No way,” Gideon says, immediately. “I’m coming with you.”

“Griddle,” Harrow says, feigning surprise. “I’m flattered.” It took years, but it seems Gideon’s finally remembered her job description.

“Don’t be,” Gideon counters. “I’ve seen enough of the long road to know it’s boring as hell. I go this way with you, I might see a rock fall on _your_ head for once.”

So much for that.

“You really are a bloodthirsty wretch. Some would call your words treason,” Harrow points out with her head held high, her chin pointed toward their destination.

Gideon shrugs. “Some haven’t grown up beside the Child Queen of the Ninth, the Witch Bitch of Drearburh.” She smiles as she says it, and it almost feels like it’s supposed to be a complement. 

“Hm,” Harrow says. She urges Phalange forward.

**

The sign at the start of the road was, unfortunately, not an exaggeration or a staged deterrent set up by the Second to keep travelers from traversing their kingdom. The path climbs quickly through foothills and into the mountains, winding along steep bluffs, unstable cliffs above and below them. There is ample evidence of the instability of the earth here, sharp boulders strewn across the path. Large chunks of the road have fallen away in several places.

Harrow and Gideon traverse the terrain slowly and on foot, carefully guiding their horses up the steep pass. It’s slow and tense, and they snap at each other at regular intervals, worn thin and brittle by the stress, by the sharp concentration required to keep their footing.

They pause each time the path widens marginally, catching their breath and relaxing their shaking legs. 

Halfway up the road they encounter an enormous boulder, a great slab of rock that blocks the road entirely. There is no sign that anyone has come this way since the rock fall occurred, no alternate path around it, no space to slip past.

Gideon spends fifteen minutes checking each edge, testing different routes, judging the boulder itself.

“If we leave the horses, we might be able to climb over it,” Gideon concludes.

That isn’t happening. They leave the horses and they won’t make it home for a year, if they ever make it back at all. The last thing Harrow wants to do is to die along a road in some remote corner of the Second beside Gideon Nav.

“Stand back,” Harrow orders.

“What?”

“ _Move_ ,” Harrow repeats.

This time Gideon does as she’s told, moving back down the path to stand beside the horses.

Harrow steps forward with Dominicus on her tongue. She focuses her thoughts and finds she can feel the pull of the mountain beneath them, the rise of the air around them and the heat of the boulder in their path. She concentrates on the boulder, on the bone and stone affixed to her fingers, on the bright white sun of Dominicus above. She knows how to do this. She’s done this thousands of times before, with rocks and logs, with chairs and books. She pushed a dragon and chased it from her kingdom. She can remove a boulder from her path.

Harrow closes her eyes and hears Gideon gasp behind her. She hears pebbles falling against the road, knocking past one another as the boulder begins to lift. The horses dance on the trail, huffing and snorting. 

“Hold them steady,” Harrow orders through clenched teeth.

“I have them,” Gideon confirms. “Go on.”

Harrow opens her eyes. She’s lifted the boulder a full foot off the path. It’s enough. Her fingers curl toward the right, toward the edge of the cliff. Her lips form words of dirt and dust and forgotten patterns. The boulder begins to move, floating toward the edge, toward the steep drop until it hovers over the deep ravine, over the river that rushes below. 

Harrow let’s go.

The boulder drops. It hits the edge of the trail and then tumbles off the ledge, hitting the base of the ravine with a great loud crash. 

“There,” Harrow says. Her throat feels hoarse, like she’s been screaming for hours. “The road is clear.” Her head spins and she feels like she might fall. She sits down in the center of the road.

“Harrow,” Gideon breathes. Harrow looks up at her knight, the Ninth champion, and she finds that Gideon’s a little flushed, a little out of breath. Gideon releases the horses and steps toward the edge of the path. She looks down over the edge.

“Nav?” Harrow asks. She closes her eyes in an attempt to stop herself from throwing up her lunch.

“Nothing,” Gideon says. She kneels in front of Harrow, studies her face. “Nevermind. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

Gideon reaches for Harrow and Harrow pushes her hands away. “What are you doing?”

Gideon falls back. “Nothing,” she says again. She crouches on the balls of her feet, her arms resting on her knees.

“I just need a minute,” Harrow promises.

“You need to rest,” Gideon counters. “Or sleep or -- I don’t know.”

Harrow shakes her head and waves a hand to dismiss Gideon. She just needs to rest another minute. Just one more minute and she’ll be fine.

Gideon stands and brushes dust from her knees. “Your nose is bleeding.”

Harrow reaches up and touches her fingers to her skin. They come away red. 

“It’s fine,” She stands and starts toward Phalange, but she stumbles after just a few steps, her boots sliding against some pebbles on the road.

“Okay,” Gideon says, rushing in to catch her. “Let’s get you on your horse.”

“I’m fine,” Harrow says for the third time.

“Stop being such a stubborn bitch and let me help you. That’s my job, remember? Let me be my queen’s champion, your Highness. I will slay the thieves that would rob you, the beasts that would kill you. I will help you up when you fall.”

“Fuck you, Nav,” Harrow spits. She’s really not in the mood for mockery.

“Yeah,” Gideon agrees. “The Ninth has never been great with the whole chivalry thing. Come on, the road looks clear enough up ahead, we should be able to ride for a while.”

She helps Harrow get up onto Phalange. Harrow groans as the world spins. 

If a mere boulder can defeat her like this, does Harrow even have the stamina for a dragon?

“Scoot back,” Gideon says. “I’m going to ride with you.”

“Get on your own fucking horse, Nav.”

“Suck it up, Harrow. Someone’s gotta stop you from falling off your horse and over the edge, and unfortunately for both of us, right now that someone’s gonna have to be me. Let’s go.”

It’s an unfortunate fact that with the way Harrow’s head is swimming, Gideon is likely right. She’s in no condition to ride. She’s in no condition to walk. She shifts back to make room for Gideon on her horse. 

It’s awkward, trying to get Gideon into the saddle in front of Harrow, but they manage it eventually. Gideon turns back toward Harrow, and perhaps Harrow imagines it, perhaps it’s just the spin of her head, but she’s nearly certain that Gideon winks.

“Hold on,” Gideon instructs.

Harrow holds on, presses her cheek to the cold mail at Gideon’s back, and closes her eyes.

**

It’s dusk by the time the road flattens out, leading them away from the cliffs and into a wide valley. There’s a lake on the eastern edge of the valley, fed by a tall waterfall. The lake eventually empties into the river that feeds to the ravine they followed beside all afternoon. Gideon gravitates toward the lake with Harrow at her back and Knocknee following close behind. Harrow’s nose has stopped bleeding, her head has cleared, and she sits up behind Gideon, no longer needing to slouch against her champion’s back. Now that she’s alert, she’s spent most of the last section of the road trying not to think about the press of her thighs against Gideon’s, the rocking of the horse beneath them. 

She’s desperate to stop, to put some distance between them and forget that this ever happened. She’s ready to let the horses drink, to refill their waterskins and to wash the dust and blood and the feeling of Gideon Nav from her skin.

“Stop there,” she says, pointing past Gideon’s shoulder to a spot backed in against a shelter of trees. There’s a low ledge along this side of the lake where the waterfall has carved deep into the underlying rock. If Harrow wasn’t still so tense from the proximity of the ride, if she wasn’t exhausted from the climb and the boulder, she might find it all beautiful. She might find it serene even. 

Gideon slides down off Phalange and then reaches back to help Harrow from the saddle. Harrow doesn’t bother to protest -- what’s the point after an entire afternoon pressed against Gideon’s back? She lets Gideon lower her down like Harrow is a frail child being carted by a parent. It does, at least, manage to erase some of Harrow’s inner conflict. Gideon helping her ungracefully off the horse feels entirely in opposition to Gideon’s back pressed tight to Harrow’s chest, to Harrow’s thighs pressed up against Gideon’s legs. 

Harrow stumbles back away from Gideon as soon as she’s on the ground. She gathers herself, smooths her shirt and clears her throat. She can’t force her mouth to issue a word of thanks, but it doesn’t matter. Gideon doesn’t seem like she expects it. In fact, she doesn’t wait around at all. Instead she clears her own throat and then leads the horses away, down the slope to where the land levels out into a gradual shoreline. 

Harrow’s left standing there alone, and after a moment of indecision she decides that she can wait her turn for the lake and busies herself collecting firewood instead. Now alone, away from the warmth of Nav’s body, she realizes just how cold the air is up here. They’re in for a frigid night. They’ll need wood for a large fire.

It’s their first evening without the constant chatter of Lady Dulcinea Septimus and they sit together in silence, eyes carefully trained toward the flames. Harrow sits with her legs folded beneath her and her entire body wrapped in her cloak. Gideon has her knees folded up against her chest with her arms wrapped tight around them.

Harrow tries to keep her mind on the dragon, the impending battle. If there’s one thing the day has shown it’s that it’s imperative for Harrow that she reserve her strength if she has any hope of defeating the beast while using her magic.

“Surely the Third must know something we do not,” Harrow says, breaking the silence. “The Third, with all of their resources, should have been able to obliterate that dragon without anyone’s help.”

“The Third doesn’t have Harrowhark Nonagesimus on their throne,” Gideon counters, and when Harrow glances toward Gideon, she finds that Gideon’s mouth is turned up in a small smile. She’s enjoying this! Somehow, seeing this second display of Harrow’s strength has actually warmed Gideon Nav’s cold hard disloyal little heart. 

Or perhaps it's the shared horse. 

Either way, it’s interesting. Harrow never thought her magic could be capable of doing anything but driving people away. Harrow never considered that Nav might warm to Harrow if they spent more time together, that Nav might _choose_ to stay in the Ninth. She’s considering it now, which means it’s definitely time to get some rest.

“I’m going to sleep,” Harrow announces. “You should too. I want to start moving again with the sun.”

Harrow unfolds her legs and stands. She pulls Gideon’s bedroll closer to the fire and curls up at one edge of it. She watches as Gideon removes her belt and her hauberk. Gideon checks on the horses, throws more wood on the fire and then settles down behind Harrow, just far enough away so that they are absolutely not touching.

Harrow relaxes, relieved that Gideon chose to maintain space between them, relieved to know that they’re still on the same page.

**

It’s just barely light when Harrow wakes. 

She feels warmth at her back and turns to find Gideon still there. She’s still facing away from Harrow, but her back is pressed against Harrow’s in an attempt to share warmth. Harrow contemplates sleeping a while longer. 

A low fog hangs over the valley. Harrow can hear the water rushing over rock and into the lake just below them, but she cannot see the waterfall clearly through the thick cloud of mist and fog. A large shadow passes overhead and then disappears. Harrow ignores it at first, but when it passes overhead a second time, Harrow feels her stomach flip and her breath catch in her throat.

“Nav,” Harrow says, her voice low. “Nav, I think -- “ She reaches over, intending to shake Gideon awake, but then freezes when the dark shape passes over the valley once more. 

She feels her heart quicken as she realizes the extent of their situation. They aren’t ready. Gideon isn’t dressed, and there is only one thing that can create a shadow that large and moving that quickly. 

The shadow returns and this time Harrow can hear the flapping of the dragon’s wings over the roar of the waterfall.

“Gideon!” Harrow says. Her voice feels weak, strangled. She doesn’t dare shout. She stands and rushes to collect Gideon’s armor, her hauberk and her pauldrons, her helmet. Gideon has it all with her: her chestplate, her greaves, and Harrow stares at it and realizes she has no idea how to help Gideon put any of this on. It will take too long. The dragon is already here. 

This is it then. This is the moment that Harrow’s been waiting for. She pictured it differently. She imagined herself older, experienced, wisened. She imagined, at the very least, Gideon Nav with armor and sword standing at her side.

Gideon hasn’t roused yet. The sound of the waterfall muffles everything and Gideon’s always been a heavy sleeper.

Harrow considers her champion for a long moment, Gideon’s face relaxed in sleep. The fog leaves condensation that collects in Gideon’s hair, darkening the red to a deep auburn. Gideon’s mouth hangs open; if the world weren’t so loud, Harrow’s sure she would hear Gideon snoring. She looks soft and young. She looks --

Harrow really should be able to do this on her own.

She turns away from Nav and studies her surroundings, what little she can see of it. It would be extremely convenient if this just happened to be a valley bordered by steep and unstable cliffs. She could pull the dragon down and rain rocks onto it, bury it beneath rubble. She’s never done anything remotely close to that in scale, but it seems to be what it would take to destroy a dragon. 

She could hurl Nav’s sword like she does rocks and other objects. Send it flying at the dragon’s chest, piercing its heart or emptying its guts. 

She can drag the beast to the ground and then split the valley in two, let the earth consume it.

She’s fairly certain that is not actually within the realm of possibility. 

Harrow’s original plan was to lure the dragon into Canaan Castle, already partially destroyed, already crumbling. Once it was deep within, she would finish the job the dragons had started there, bring the very castle down onto its head.

It seems ridiculous now. All of this seems ridiculous. Harrow has been trying to decipher the books of Dominicus her entire life, and all she has learned are party tricks. Sure, she moved a boulder from the road, and then she promptly collapsed. She yanked at the dragon in her kingdom, and she passed out for hours afterward.

Well, nothing she can do about that now.

She walks toward the road, toward the center of the valley and away from the still sleeping Gideon. The dragon swoops low over her head. Harrow feels the rock beneath her feet, feels it pulling her, grounding her. She touches the round bead of stone on her finger, the polished bones of her mother and her father. They created her, they shaped her into the woman she is today. Harrow cannot let them down again.

She closes her eyes and she clenches her hands into fists. And then she takes all of the power within her, all of the power in the rocks and earth below her, finds the blood and the bone that ties the dragon to the realm. She holds her fists up to the sky, and then, with all the force contained in her small frame, she yanks her hands down toward the earth.

The dragon plummets from the sky, hits the floor of the valley with a crash that shakes the ground and echoes off the surrounding mountain peaks. 

If the terrain was just right, it would have worked. The dragon would have brought down rock.

It’s the closest she’s ever been to the dragon. She can see it clearly for the first time as it attempts to scramble to get to its feet. 

It’s honestly beautiful. A shade of green rarely seen in the Ninth, milky and pale, like the fabric of Dulcinea’s gowns. Its belly glows with fire red veins. The dragon’s nose isn’t long or turned down like the illustrations of dragons in Harrow’s library. This dragon’s snout is short and turned up at the end so the sharp front teeth are perpetually exposed… a little like the nose of Dulcinea Septimus, actually. Harrow almost laughs at the comparison. 

She’s just being petty now.

And then the dragon opens its mouth and attempts to set the valley aflame. 

It lost track of Harrow when it fell and it just lets loose in the direction it happens to be facing now, luckily away from both Harrow and their camp. Harrow looks back and sees that Gideon is up now. She’s put on her hauberk, her gauntlets and her helmet, and she’s rushing toward Harrow with her sword in both hands. She looks to be screaming something, though Harrow can’t hear a thing over the commotion. Harrow catches sight of their horses running free through the trees.

The dragon’s flames struggle to catch on the damp grasses and shrubs that grow in the valley. The dragon roars at this, swinging its great head back and forth, searching for Harrow. Harrow stands her ground. She keeps as still as she can.

The dragon’s eye catches on Gideon’s armor first. It turns to face her. The dragon lowers its face toward the ground, it’s big black eyes peering out toward at the advancing Ninth champion. 

Harrow isn’t about to wait to see how this all plays out. She pulls up from the earth, feels the air around her grow dense. The condensation collects on her cloak and her skin and then she releases, feels the air rush away from her and she pushes it hard in the direction o the dragon. 

The beast is forced off its feet. It flaps its wings furiously as it stumbles to the side. Gideon is still charging, her sword raised and her mouth open in a scream. She makes contact with the dragon’s front leg just as the dragon lifts off the ground and makes for the sky. It screams, its mouth burping flames into the air. Blood drips from its leg. It turns to snap at Gideon and Gideon throws herself to the ground just in time to barely miss the dragon’s teeth.

Harrow braces herself for what she is sure will come next; Gideon Nav engulfed in flame. Harrow takes a deep breath and readies herself to douse the fire, to save her champion, the closest thing Harrow has ever had to a friend. 

The dragon does not attack Gideon again. Instead it takes off, rising until it disappears back into the haze, a shadow once more. 

“Nav,” Harrow shouts, finding her voice. “Over here!”

Gideon turns and begins running toward Harrow. “Watch the sky!” she screams.

Harrow watches the sky. 

The shadow returns, flying fast overhead. Harrow feels a drop of rain hit her cheek. She reaches up to wipe it away. Her fingers comes away red. 

She hears the wings flapping behind her and she turns to see the dragon coming at her fast from behind, its mouth open wide and its eyes bright. Harrow screams and throws her hands out. The dragon falls back with a piercing shriek. It recovers quickly this time, circling back over Harrow’s head.

Harrow feels drained, but she’s still standing. Her head has not yet started to spin. Her heart pounds in her chest and her fingers twitch with anticipation. And then the dragon dives again and again Harrow pushes it back. Again the dragon recovers, only to dive at Harrow once more.

It’s trying to wear Harrow down. It knows how this works; it knows Harrow can’t go on like this forever. The dragon knows that at some point Harrow will run out of power, will run out of strength, and then it can kill her. It will win and there’s nothing Harrow can do to kill it before that happens. There’s no rock that Harrow can throw onto its head, no crack that will open and swallow it whole. The dragon is stronger than Harrow’s magic, stronger than all Harrow has learned from the books of Dominicus. It’s all useless. Everything her parents did, every mistake they made, meaningless.

The dragon flies overhead and more blood rains down onto Harrow’s face and her arms, onto the grass at her feet.

She can’t do this without Gideon. She needs Gideon’s sword if she’s going to win this. 

She spins to search for the knight. Gideon isn’t where Harrow expects her to be and Harrow searches the fog for the glint of armor, for a flash of red against the grey.

“Gideon!” Harrow screams. “Gideon! Gideon!”

And then the dragon rushes Harrow, mouth wide and fire ready. 

Harrow’s unprepared. She isn’t ready. She closes her eyes and waits for the flames to hit.

She’s hit instead by the full force of her champion. Gideon barrels into her, her arm wrapping around Harrow’s waist and lifting her easily off the ground. The air is hot with fire, and Harrow opens her eyes just as Gideon launches them both back over the edge of the low cliff and into the lake below. 

**

Harrow looks up and she sees nothing but red. 

Gideon is thrashing beside her, desperately trying to swim toward something. Harrow looks at Gideon in the underwater glow of the fire and sees where Gideon is pointing them. The waterfall. If they come up behind the waterfall, perhaps they’ll be hidden. Perhaps they’ll be protected from the dragon’s flame.

The surface of the lake breaks above them as the dragon swoops low, grasping with sharp claws, reaching out for them. They sink deeper to avoid the dragon’s grasp. Harrow’s chest aches and she fights to swim, pushing herself toward the churning water of the waterfall.

She’s keeps close to edge of the lake, fights and kicks against the current of the waterfall. The sky above her erupts again with red. Gideon is struggling to swim behind her, but she’s battling the weight of her armor and her sword. She yanks her helmet from her head and lets it fall to the bottom of the lake. Harrow turns and helps Gideon pull off her gauntlets and her pauldrons. She begins to pull at the chains of Gideon’s hauberk, but Gideon shakes her head and pushes Harrow on. 

The dragon’s head dips beneath the surface of the lake and Harrow ducks back just in time. Gideon’s mouth lets loose a scream, bubbles rushing to the surface as she lifts her sword and stabs up and into the roof of the dragon’s mouth. The water around them turns red and the dragon’s head pulls back. 

They push on toward the waterfall. 

**

Harrow gulps air into her lungs, her fingers clutching hard at wet rock, trying to find purchase, a spot where she can grip. The spray of the cascading water is hard against her back, but as her eyes adjust, she sees that there is hope. There is a small ledge here, just wide enough for a footpath. It disappears into a crevice within the rock face. A cave? Could they be so lucky?

Harrow turns back just as Gideon breaks up through the water’s surface with a gasp. She struggles, pulling her sword from the lake and throwing it up onto the damp rock. 

“Come on,” Gideon says, choking on the words. “We have to keep moving.” She reaches for Harrow and pushes her up and onto the narrow ledge. 

“I think there’s a cave,” Harrow says. She gets to her knees and reaches for Gideon, pulling her up from the lake. Gideon pauses there on her hands and knees, her mouth open and her chest heaving. She coughs and spits water, panting as she tries to catch her breath. 

Beyond the waterfall the dragon roars.

Gideon scrambles to her feet and Harrow follows suit. She’s dizzy now and she leans heavily against the slick wall of rock as she makes her way toward that dark gap. 

“This way,” Harrow shouts. She reaches back for Gideon’s hand. When Gideon’s fingers find hers, Harrow holds on tight. She leads them into the dark. 

**

They stand there in the blackness for a long time, waiting for their eyes to adjust. The cave smells damp, stale and musty. It feels safe, at least for now.

“Are you all right?” Gideon asks. Her hand seems searing hot against Harrow’s palm.

“I’m all right,” Harrow confirms. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Gideon agrees. “I’m okay so far.” She squeezes Harrow’s hand, a reassuring gesture. Harrow squeezes back.

The cave is taking shape around them now as Harrow’s eyes adjust to the gloom. Pale light leaks in from the crevice and the edges of walls become visible, a ceiling above them. The room is bigger than Harrow expected. A glow somewhere to the right suggests a second entrance not far off.

“I think there might be another way out over there,” Harrow says. Gideon grunts beside her.

“And then what?”

Harrow turns toward Gideon. She can barely make out the details of Gideon’s face in the dark. Gideon has her sword propped against her shoulder, her back pressed tight to the wall of the cave. She shifts her weight from one leg to the other and then back again.

“I can bring the dragon down, but I cannot slay it,” Harrow admits. She swallows, ready to say the words she’s routinely denied since leaving Drearburh. “I need you for that. I need your sword.”

“You have it,” Gideon promises without a moment’s hesitation.

“Just like that?” Harrow expected some snide remarks, some name calling at the very least. 

Gideon shifts beside her. Harrow thinks it was probably a shrug. “It’s always been yours.”

The simplicity of Gideon’s response somehow makes it all feel worse, somehow makes it all feel terribly _important_.

“Gideon.”

Gideon makes a strange breathy sound; it takes Harrow several long seconds to realize it might be a laugh. 

“Are you laughing?” Harrow asks. “How can you be laughing now?”

“I’m not laughing,” Gideon says, except that the shake to her voice really makes it sound like she is. “I’m just — “ She lifts Harrow’s hand to her mouth and presses her lips to Harrow’s knuckles. She holds the kiss for a long time. It feels -- it feels too formal, too reverent. Fire ignites within Harrow, burning beneath her skin. Her entire face feels hot and she wants to slap Gideon, and she wants Gideon to kiss her again. She tries to pull her hand away. Gideon lets their hands fall back to her side, but she holds on tight to Harrow and doesn’t let go.

“Gideon, if you help me with this, I promise you never have to come back to the Ninth again.” Harrow doesn’t know what to say, but she knows she needs to offer something, and it’s the only thing she knows to give, the only thing she knows Gideon has always wanted. 

Gideon is quiet beside her.

“Nav?”

“It’s funny,” Gideon says. Her voice is low, careful. “Those words don’t sound as good as I always imagined they would. Could you take them back?”

“Take them back? I — “ Harrow’s heart pounds in her chest as she realizes what Gideon is saying, as she realizes what exactly Gideon needs Harrow to admit.

Harrow’s exhausted thoughts from the night before return. She never imagined that her magic, that the circumstances of her birth, could be capable of doing anything but driving people away. Until these last few days, Harrow never once considered that Nav might warm to Harrow if they spent more time together, that Nav could ever wish to return to the Ninth. That isn’t it though, is it? This isn’t about the Ninth, not for Gideon. 

“I won’t order you back to a kingdom you hate,” Harrow admits. “But I’ll never stop wanting you there. You are the one bright light in my entire kingdom of shadow. My kingdom and my heart are darker without you in them.”

“Okay,” Gideon says. “That’s enough.” She sets down her sword and releases Harrow’s hand.

“Gideon,” Harrow says. She reaches out for Gideon, but her hands come up empty. Gideon has stepped away from her. Harrow said the wrong words and now -- Harrow fumbles in the dark, tries to recover. “Whatever you want, I promise it’s yours.”

And then suddenly Gideon’s back, her hands on Harrow’s shoulders. “No, no,” Gideon says. “You’ve given me everything already.” She pulls Harrow in against her chest and Harrow’s cheek is pressed to the cold chains of Gideon’s hauberk. Gideon’s hands press to her back, holding her tight, and Harrow realizes she cannot remember the last time she was held. 

It isn’t enough. She wants to rip the hauberk from Gideon’s body, remove the layer of metal that separates them. She wants to press her face against Gideon’s breast, press her nose to Gideon’s skin and smell her heat, the sharp salt of her sweat. 

It’s terrifying, an inexplicably _lonely_ feeling, but Harrow is not alone. Gideon is there and her hands are on Harrow’s back, on her shoulders. They’re on Harrow’s face, gently tilting Harrow’s head up toward hers. 

When Gideon’s mouth finds hers, Harrow is ready, and she’s never felt less prepared. Gideon kisses her tentatively and Harrow reciprocates as though she’s been starving. She rushes into the kiss, her hands trying to find something to hold, something to grab, and finding nothing but hard metal. Her fingers scrabble up toward Gideon’s face, finally able to touch the warmth of Gideon’s skin, her neck, her cheeks, her lake wet hair.

Gideon laughs into the kiss, a perfectly delighted sound, and Harrow swallows it and her mouth begs for more. She forgets the dragon, forgets the Ninth, forgets Dominicus and her parents and every dark and rotten thing that’s ever tried to swallow her whole. She lets Gideon in, lets herself be consumed by Gideon’s searing bright light. It’s everything the most secret parts of her have always craved, everything she never dared to hope for, and now it’s here, _she’s_ here. Gideon’s heart isn’t hard or small or disloyal. Harrow’s never misjudged anymore more severely than she did Gideon Nav. 

She’ll make it up to her. She’ll spend the rest of her life making it up to Gideon and she will revel in every second. 

Something knocks against the cave floor. It sounds like the dancing clop of a skittish horse’s hooves against a cobblestone street. 

It’s Gideon’s sword. The sword has fallen, that’s all. Harrow ignores it and kisses Gideon again.

More tapping, and it definitely isn’t the fall of a sword. Gideon pulls away, turns her head toward the light at the other end of the cave. Harrow leans in and kisses the side of Gideon’s neck.

“What was that?” Gideon asks.

Harrow crashes back to the present, to the damp and musty cave, to the lake water that drips from her clothes. Gideon steps away from Harrow and picks up her sword. Together, they step further into cave.

A horse grunts and they start. The noise is coming from the right, toward the other source of light and as they turn from their corner and move toward the sound, toward the brighter section of the cave, the second entrance of the cave comes into view, and they both squint in the sudden brightness.

Beside her, Gideon says, “Protesilaus?”

“Pro -- Dulcinea’s horse?” Harrow asks, incredulous. She uses her hand to shade her eyes and searches until she finds the grey steed. It certainly looks like Protesilaus. Gideon steps closer for a better look.

Harrow can see all that she needs to see from where she stands. It’s definitely Protesilaus. He’s carrying all of Dulcinea’s gear and his reigns are hooked around a stalagmite.

“How did he get here?” Gideon asks, turning back toward Harrow. Harrow ignores Gideon’s flushed cheeks, the perfect line of her neck. She shakes her head. Focus. 

“I don’t know,” Harrow says. 

Perfectly on cue, Dulcinea Septimus steps into the cave. She starts when she sees Harrow and Gideon standing beside her horse. Her hands fly up to cover her heart and she laughs. 

“The Ninth! Here you are! I’d started to worry you’d been eaten by that dragon.”

Gideon does not light up in Dulcinea’s presence the way she did just days ago. Instead she says “nearly,” and her voice sounds like stone. She steps back away from Protesilaus and comes to stand beside Harrow. She reaches back and her fingers trace a line up Harrow’s forearm.

Harrow nearly knocks Gideon’s hand away before she realizes it isn’t some leftover impulse from a moment ago; it isn’t an inappropriate and too public display of affection. Gideon is attempting to communicate something.

Harrow looks down at her arm, at the spot Gideon touches. Then her eyes shift to that same place on Dulcinea’s arm. There’s a long laceration there. Dulcinea’s blood stains the pale green of her sleeve. The fabric, that same seafoam green of the dragon’s scales. That same upturned nose. The perpetually visible upper teeth. 

Harrow had made that initial comparison from a place of petty jealousy, but now -- it’s impossible. It’s ridiculous. And yet -- 

“You’re the dragon,” Harrow says with unmistakable awe in her voice. 

“Did you hit your head?” Dulcinea asks. A drop of blood rolls over her lower lip and drips onto the floor. She wipes it away with a finger, presses her lips together. When she grins, her teeth are painted red. “Oops. All right, you’ve got me. I’m the dragon. And you, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, are a Daughter of Dominicus.” 

Before Harrow can ask what that’s supposed to mean, Dulcinea opens her mouth and blood pours out onto the cave floor. 

“Oh Gideon,” Dulcinea pouts. “Look what you’ve done to me. I thought we were friends.”

“Come here,” Gideon offers, sword in hand. “I’ll fix it for you.”

Dulcinea laughs and as she laughs her mouth keeps opening, wider and wider, impossibly huge. As they watch in horror, her teeth grow long and sharp, and then Dulcinea screams, an inhuman shriek. 

“What the _fuck_ ,” Gideon shouts in horror. She charges the creature they’ve been calling Dulcinea Septimus, but she isn’t fast enough. Dulcinea turns and runs from the cave, plunging right off the edge of the cliff beyond. Gideon and Harrow rush after her, stopping at the cave’s entrance. They’re overlooking the same ravine that they travelled just yesterday. If Harrow searches, she’ll be able to find the slab of boulder that she dropped at the bottom. A perfect vantage point.

Below them the dragon unfurls its great leathery wings, soaring above the rushing river. 

“Okay,” Gideon says. “You have my sword. Now what’s the plan?”

“We need to get her back into the valley,” Harrow says. “We can’t stay here. She’s going to -- “

“She’s going to blow fire right into the mouth of this cave and cook us all.”

“Yeah,” Harrow agrees. The ledge outside of the cave terminates to their left, but to Harrow’s right there’s a clear path that must lead back around to the waterfall. She reaches back to grab Gideon’s hand. “This way!”

They rush along the ledge, careful not to slip in the mud left by the morning fog, by the mist of the falls. When the dragon swoops back around, Harrow is ready. She holds tight to Gideon as she pulls power from the earth, from the mountain. She feels strong here, and when she wrenches the dragon from its course, it’s pulled fast and hard toward the wall that rises high above the cave. Dulcinea hits hard and rock crashes down in her wake. 

“Watch out,” Harrow shouts, pushing Gideon along the trail and away from the path of potential collapse. 

They reach the valley before Dulcinea recovers, running fast toward that field of grass that blankets the valley floor. The fog has lifted. They’ll be able to see her clearly now. 

“Stick to the trees,” Gideon says. “I’ve got it from here.” She leans in and kisses Harrow hard on the mouth, then she pushes Harrow toward the treeline and takes off, running in the opposite direction, toward the central road that bisects the valley. Dominicus shines down on Gideon, flashing off of Gideon’s hauberk, drawing the eye of the dragon toward her and away from Harrow’s drab figure shadowed by the trees. 

Dulcinea emerges from the ravine with a roar. Smoke streams from her nostrils and blood rains down from her mouth. Harrow stands back in the shadows and the dragon does not see her, but she catches sight of Gideon. She swoops low over the Ninth’s knight, the force of the wind from her wings pushing at Gideon’s back and causing her to stumble. The dragon pulls up, her big head scanning the valley, searching for Harrow. She doesn’t find her. When Dulcinea turns for another pass at Gideon, Harrow prepares to call on Dominicus one last time.

She focuses. She whispers careful words in that earthy forgotten tongue and the mountain air crackles against her skin. She waits until the dragon is rushing toward Gideon and then she clenches her fist in front of her, the bones of her parents level with her eyes. She heaves her arm back, hard and tight, and then she falls to her knees. She punches the earth and she screams with the effort. She feels the energy drain from her body, rushing down into the rock below, and the dragon falls with it, hitting the ground hard.

Gideon is waiting. She sees her chance and she does not hesitate. She rushes in, goes straight for the heart. Her sword sinks in and Gideon falls back, stumbling away, but she isn’t fast enough. The dragon’s head comes down hard and flings Gideon aside. Harrow shouts as she watches Gideon’s body fall way, landing limp in the grass of the field.

Dulcinea lets out one more earth-shaking roar and then she disappears and Harrow can’t hold on any longer. 

**

Harrow opens her eyes to find Dominicus low in the sky, sinking away and leaving streaks of orange and red in its wake. She feels warmth at her back, hears the crackle of a fire over the roar of the waterfall. She turns to find that they’re back at their camp by the lake. Gideon is sitting by the fire with her back toward Harrow. She’s removed her hauberk and she’s wearing a fresh shirt. Her hair is wet and she has a strip of cloth tied tight around her right knee.

Harrow has been placed on Gideon’s bedroll and covered by Gideon’s thick cloak. She reaches out and sets a hand on Gideon’s back.

Gideon jumps, startled by the touch, but when she turns back toward Harrow, she’s smiling.

“You’re awake,” Gideon says. 

Harrow nods toward Gideon’s knee. “You’re hurt.”

“Not really,” Gideon shrugs. “My knee twisted when I fell. It’s nothing.” A twisted knee isn’t nothing. Not when you’re alone, when you’re high up in unfamiliar mountains and far from home.

“And Dulcinea?” Harrow asks.

“Dead,” Gideon confirms. “You did it.”

“We did it,” Harrow corrects. Gideon frowns, looking far from the triumphant champion Harrow expects. “What is it?”

“It’s stupid,” Gideon says. 

“You’ve said plenty of stupid things before,” Harrow shrugs. “No point stopping now.”

Gideon laughs and pats the ground beside her. Harrow accepts the invitation. She stands up, testing her legs. She feels better, strong, hungry. She stretches her legs and looks around. In the fading light, the valley looks much the same as it did before the dragon appeared. Phalange and Knocknee are back from wherever they ran off to, having survived the battle thankfully unscathed. Gideon’s tied them to a nearby tree and they seem content, grazing on the surrounding grass.

She picks up Gideon’s cloak and wraps it around her shoulders, then settles onto the ground beside Gideon. She keeps some distance between them, but Gideon closes it immediately, shifting over until their thighs and shoulders meet. She leans down and presses a kiss to Harrow’s temple, her nose tucked into Harrow’s dark hair.

“You stink,” Gideon notes, her lips forming the words against Harrow’s skin. 

Harrow laughs, actually laughs and means it. It feels new and strange, but good. It feels really good. “Fuck you,” she says, and shoves at Gideon. “I’m allowed to stink. I’m queen, remember?”

“Mm, the Stink Witch of the Ninth has a nice ring to it,” Gideon suggests. She leans back into Harrow, doesn’t seem to mind if Harrow stinks, despite her protests. 

“So does, ‘Ser Gideon Nav, Celebrated Stable Mucker of the Ninth.’ An honored title.”

“I’ll take it,” Gideon says. 

Harrow laughs again and thinks she could get used to this. “What were you going to say?”

“Nothing,” Gideon says, immediately and then she shakes her head and corrects. “It just doesn’t feel how I thought it would. I mean, we took down a _dragon_ , but it’s the body of Lady Dulcinea that’s lying out there now with my sword still sticking out of her chest. It’s obscene and I don’t know -- it’s sad.”

Harrow imagines it; Gideon alone out there, standing over the broken body of a woman that had her lighting up with giddy delight just days ago. It had to be difficult, had to hurt for Gideon to turn her back, walk away without retrieving her beloved sword. It had to feel like she left a chunk of her heart behind.

“She wasn’t who you thought she was,” Harrow points out. “She wasn’t Lady Dulcinea Septimus from the Seventh Kingdom, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t deserve to be mourned.”

“She didn’t die right away,” Gideon admits. “She held on, and when I made it back to her, she spoke words in a language I couldn’t understand. She died in my arms.”

“Oh, Gideon,” Harrow says. “I’m sorry.”

Gideon shakes her head. “Don’t. Tomorrow I’ll retrieve my sword and I’ll bury her body.”

“I’ll help you,” Harrow offers. Of course, Harrow will help.

“And then what?” Gideon asks.

Harrow considers this. They could go home. They could go home and forget that any of this ever happened. 

Harrow isn’t ready to go home. She isn’t ready to leave behind what they’ve started out here together.

“And then, together, we travel to the Third,” Harrow suggests. “Ser Gideon of the Ninth Kingdom claims her prize. We can pretend I’m your squire.”

Gideon shoots Harrow an incredulous look, eyebrows raised. She chooses not to comment on Harrow’s squire suggestion for now, instead makes a far more reasonable observation:

“We’ll have no proof. We have no trophy to present to the Third princesses.”

Harrow shrugs. “So we tell them the truth and then we find out what material the Third Kingdom is made of. And if we return to the Ninth with empty pockets, so be it.” Harrow feels so much richer than she was when she set out from Castle Drearburh. She can’t find it in her heart to truly care about gold chips with Gideon here at her side. She wouldn’t trade this moment for Lady Dulcinea’s life and she won’t trade it for enough gold chips to fill an ocean.

“And then?” Gideon presses. She chews at her lip. “There was something else that Dulcinea said. She said Dominicus rises and the daughter will show her the way. Do you know what that means?”

Harrow puzzles over this, but she comes up blank.

“It doesn’t mean anything to me,” Harrow says. “Dulcinea called me a daughter of Dominicus, but Dominicus was an old wizard, a fairy tale. The daughter will show who the way?”

Gideon shrugs. “Got me.”

“All right. That’s it then,” Harrow says. “I’ve spent my entire life plagued by cryptic questions with no one to go to for answers. What are the books of Dominicus? What are their purpose? I need to know what my parents have done, what I continue to do. There are no answers in the Ninth, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Perhaps it’s time I searched for them.”

“Where will you start?” 

“The Sixth,” Harrow says, with hardly a second thought. Prince Palamedes seems the obvious starting point. 

“Wherever you choose to go, I will follow,” Gideon promises. 

“Even to a kingdom that prides itself on its libraries?” Harrow asks. 

Gideon shudders against Harrow and Harrow slaps her arm.

“Seriously though,” Gideon says. “You have my sword.”

They’re quiet for a long moment after that, staring into the fire, transfixed by the flames. Their hands gravitate toward each other until Gideon’s fingers brush against Harrow’s wrist, the light touch setting off sparks beneath Harrow’s skin. Gideon ventures the touch again and Harrow can’t stand it anymore. She grips Gideon’s hand in hers and turns to face her champion.

“Is that all I have?” Harrow asks. 

Ser Gideon Nav, the Shining Light of the Ninth Kingdom, answers her queen with a kiss.


End file.
